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The post Measures Recruitment Agencies must take to be GDPR Compliant appeared first on recLAW.

Privacy rights are granted to individuals under GDPR in the UK and are designed to empower individuals by giving them control over their personal data and ensuring transparency and accountability in data processing activities. Recruiters need to understand and remember these rights and make necessary adjustments to their databases and processes to enable individuals to protect these rights.

These rights include:

1. The Right to Information: Individuals can request information about the type of, and reason for, data being held in a company.
2. The Right of Access: Individuals have the right to view the personal data that is being processed about them.
3. The Right to Rectification: Individuals can update or correct their personal data if they believe it is incorrect or outdated.
4. The Right to Erasure: Individuals can request the immediate deletion of their data from an organisation’s data files.
5. The Right to Restriction of Processing: Individuals have the right to request that their data be handled in a specific manner under certain conditions, including ceasing processing as requested.
6. The Right to Data Portability: Individuals, under specific conditions, have the right to obtain their personal data in a commonly used format, transfer it to another controller, or use it for personal purposes.
7. The Right to Object: Individuals can object to the processing of their data, including profiling, under certain conditions.
8. The Right to Avoid Automated Decision-Making: Individuals have the right to avoid legal consequences arising solely from decisions made through automated processing, including profiling.

By being aware of these privacy rights and taking the necessary steps to comply with them, recruiters can establish trust with candidates, demonstrate their commitment to data privacy, and mitigate the risk of non-compliance and potential penalties and/or claims.

There are some specific aspects where recruiters should be vigilant regarding privacy rights:

1. Consent and Information: Recruiters should obtain informed and specific consent from candidates before collecting and processing their personal data, e.g., the information needed for a background check. They should provide clear and transparent information about the purpose, scope, and duration of data processing.
2. Access and Rectification: Recruiters must be prepared to fulfil requests from candidates who want to access their personal data held by the organisation. They should have mechanisms in place to facilitate such requests and ensure the accuracy and timeliness of rectifications or updates requested by candidates.
3. Data Retention and Erasure: Recruiters should establish clear retention periods for candidate data and delete or anonymise it when it is no longer necessary or upon request from the candidate.
4. Data Security and Protection: Recruiters need to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to safeguard candidate data from unauthorised access, accidental loss, or disclosure. This includes ensuring the secure storage, transmission, and disposal of personal data.
5. Data Portability: If a candidate requests the transfer of their personal data to another organisation, recruiters should have processes in place to provide the data in a commonly used and machine-readable format.
6. Objection and Automated Decision-Making: Recruiters should respect candidates’ right to object to the processing of their personal data, including automated decision-making and profiling, and provide a means for them to exercise this right. For example, an applicant may request job alerts but ask that their information not be stored on your database. The organisation must ensure that they have the means to process this request.
7. Privacy by Design: Recruiters should adopt privacy by design principles, integrating privacy considerations into their recruitment processes and systems from the outset. This includes implementing data protection measures, conducting privacy impact assessments, and minimising the collection and retention of unnecessary personal data.
8. Privacy policies must be readily available to individuals on request and you must disclose where you store application data and state that it is only used for recruitment purposes. 

If we can help with any GDPR issues, contact us at info@reclaw.co.uk.

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How do we need to use iR35 with our own contracts?

There are three key areas that need looking at from an IR35 perspective within contracts which are as follows: 

1. That the agreement provides the right to substitute. 
2. That the agreement confirms that the client does not have any supervision or control over the work 
3. That there is no mutuality of obligations between the parties 

This is explained a little bit more detail below.

Substitution:

Whether or not the contractor engaged for the work can provide a substitute in their place can determine if  the assignment would fall inside or outside of IR35.  

The contractor should be able to send a substitute to complete the work on the client’s behalf or reassign the work. If the contractor cannot make a substitution and must perform the work himself then this could bring the assignment inside IR35.

If genuinely a substitute can be provided, then the contract is likely to be outside the scope of IR35.

Supervision, Direction and Control:

The client cannot supervise, direct or be in control of the contractor during the assignment. The key things to look out for within a contract;

• The contractor’s work will be overseen by the client and that it is specified how that will be performed. 
• That the work will be supervised by a line manager or a company employee. 
• Instruction on how the work will be performed and the ability to move between task to task.
• Any clauses that specify any rights of control or supervision over the contractor.

it is important to make sure that there is wording within the contract to indicate that the contractor will not be under the supervision, direction or control of the client.

Mutuality of obligation: 

When a company is obliged to provide paid work and a contractor is obliged to then accept and complete the work, this is considered mutuality of obligation.

The contract must not include any mutuality of obligation; an example of this would be “exclusivity” of work clause. This would prevent the contractor from taking on other work with multiple clients at one time. 

A contractor must be able to work from project-to-project, with no obligation to carry on working for the client after the work is complete.

A contractor also has the right to terminate a contract part-way through. An employee, on the other hand, can only work for one company and has an obligation to carry on working when their tasks are complete.

The contractor isn’t required to take on any future work and can refuse to perform any more work, the contract should reflect this arrangement.

Don’t forget to get in touch with us at info@reclaw.co.uk if you have any questions on this or would like some help!

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